Free Republic

<p>SOMETIMES the best thing about the past is that it's over. Unfortunately, in the case of California's recall, it's not over even when it's over. While others celebrate or bemoan the election's immediate results, we are concerned about the unintended, longer-term consequences of this crazy recall chapter of our history.</p>

The U.S. economy has been working from a script that said "pause here until Iraq has been liberated." The pause is nearly over, so it's a good time to face up to the postwar state of the world. The technology sector is crucial to the economy, and personal computers to the tech sector -- and consumers and businesses no longer replace their PCs on cue. The U.S. computer industry will either deal with this fact or come screeching to a traumatic halt soon. Five years ago we were flooded with information; now we're drowning. Meanwhile, the distance between evolving hardware...

<p>Thousands of jubilant Iraqis, ready for a brand-new beat, dance in the street to celebrate the toppling of a brutal dictator whose tyranny has lasted 24 years but not 24 hours more. Preoccupied with the dramatic image of a noose around Saddam's neck as he is dragged to the ground in Baghdad's al-Fardous square (a 20-foot metal statue of Saddam, that is), the world largely overlooks the news of another dictator, Cuba's Fidel Castro, so far besting the Iraqi tyrant's run by 20 years and counting.</p>

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a photo from a University of Wisconsin brochure tells us all we need to know about diversity in America. At the order of some clever administrator, the face of Diallo Shabazz, a black student, was digitally inserted into a sea of white faces to give the university a rainbow visage. Here we may see what the totemization of diversity has accomplished: deceit, quotas and ridiculous efforts at race consciousness. In "Diversity: The Invention of a Concept" (Encounter, 351 pages, $24.95), Peter Wood attempts to give us a "biography" of the idea...

By SUSAN WARREN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Indoor fireworks -- once the trademark of major rock concerts and extravagant, Disneyesque theatrical productions -- have soared in popularity, showing up even at school plays and shopping malls as people clamor to put more sizzle into events. But as the displays have become more sophisticated, more spectacular and more widely available, concerns have grown about the safe way to play with fire indoors. The idea that fireworks have been specially designed for inside use can be deceiving, says Arthur E. Cote, chief engineer of the National Fire Protection Association,...

When guitarist/producer Ry Cooder returned to Cuba in 2001, he looked up Manuel Galban, a guitarist he calls "the last twanging man in Cuba." Mr. Galban, perhaps the island's greatest guitar player, is also something of an anomaly. He mastered the solid-body electric guitar in the 1950s, a time when few electric guitars were being imported from the U.S. And his musical sensibilities were nurtured during an era when Havana enthusiastically absorbed such distinctly American influences as doo-wop -- a trend that ended abruptly when Fidel Castro took power in 1959. Mr. Cooder enjoyed the biggest success of his career...

<p>Recently, the King of Beers, a.k.a. Budweiser, has been pushing the notion that new dodgy foreign beers may not be fresh and may therefore be dangerous. The "born on" date imprinted on Bud bottles smells of beer evangelism, an attempt to retain their heartland market - the folks who could imagine seeing John the Baptist every time they pop open a bottle of cheap St. Louis lager.</p>

<p>I was at the movies the other night and the audience did something that I found appalling. Now this is a rare occurrence for me, as I take smug pride in our city's reputation for sophistication and tolerance, including in movie theaters.</p>

Tonight the cast of the musical "Hank Williams: Lost Highway" in New York's Manhattan Ensemble Theater will offer a memorial toast to the country legend. Half a century ago, at age 29, Williams's heart stopped sometime between New Year's Eve and the next morning in the back seat of a Cadillac taking him to a show in Canton, Ohio. Let's hope the musicians now atop the country charts will also pay tribute to the singer-songwriter who, above all others, paved the way for their success. If Jimmie Rodgers was the father of commercial country music, then Hank Williams was its...

By European standards, the Democrats and the Republicans are remarkably similar in their ideologies – or lack of ideologies." That's not me speaking – that's the venerable BBC, commenting on this fall's U.S. campaigns. Go ahead – take the Pepsi challenge. Read quotes from U.S. politicians without looking at their party affiliations. Can you tell the difference? Never had I missed Germany as much as I did on election night, when all the failures of the American political system became painfully apparent to me. For a start, the American system is ultimately rigged in favor of the status quo. By...

<p>When Mohammed was born, it was a time of Dark Age chaos: tribal vendettas, rivalries, gender inequality, warfare and economic and social disorders. People lived in tyranny under the shadow of the sword perpetuating slavery and oppression. To this, Mohammed brought law, order and social justice by using the very tools used to perpetuate injustice, hatred, bias and bigotry. And he was overwhelmingly successful in uniting pagan Arabia into a block of monotheistic believers.</p>

As President Bush begins the process of intervening in the West Coast port debacle, America is baffled that a small union local of 10,500 longshoremen has been able to gain a chokehold on the flailing economy. Indeed, concerns are increasing that the $2 billion-a-day port closures could push the nation into double-dip recession. This is a threat to the nation's well-being, and it deserves a response as resolute as the one the president is making on the international scene. Although invoking the Taft-Hartley Act may temporarily reopen the ports, it does not confront the underlying problem -- government-granted union coercive...

I drove up to Berkeley from wherever it is I hang my hat (and I really don't care if Registered posts my NC address and voting record.) It is a warm, pleasant day there, with a cool breeze blowing, and before leaving I changed into my American flag T-shirt after having a Duh! moment this morning at a grocery store seeing a woman wearing a rather gaudy, sparkling American flag blouse, the kind that Lucille Ball wore way back when Abbie Hoffman got arrested for wearing a shirt with a similar design. I took that T-shirt abroad against the advice...

<p>Berkeley, the first city to ban Styrofoam and wood-fired pizza ovens, could become the first to enact Aristotle's ancient law of logic -- that every entity is equal to itself. In a philosophical effort to come up with a city law that no one could ever break, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle's law, commonly expressed as A=A.</p>

<p>While Kenyan men continued their domination of the San Francisco Bay to Breakers, Sunday's race saw the long-awaited breakup of Microsoft.</p> <p>It happened with about 50 yards left in the 7.46-mile race as the Microsoft centipede, 13 men linked by a nylon banner, attempted to finish ahead of the leading woman runner -- an annual goal for the top male centipede.</p>

<p>Since we suffer from acute political "taxonomitis" in America--a reflexive condition that compels us to label people as right- or left-wing, or liberal, conservative, fascist and so forth, without much concession to shade or nuance--we've all been flummoxed by the murder of Pim Fortuyn.</p>

MUSLIMS Thursday, May 9, 9-11 p.m. EDT On PBS (check local listings) Not all stereotypes are inaccurate, and the ingrained view of the Muslim world to which the West subscribes is, in fact, more true to life than not. We regard Muslim societies, on the whole, as places where women are oppressed and other religions anathematized, where laws and punishments can be primitive and cruel, and where the ability to reason in a modern manner (especially in theology and science, not to mention relations between the sexes) is impaired by the irreducible Word of the Quran. Nothing I saw in...

<p>The Telegraph of London reports that Paul McCartney's been invited by Fidel Castro to play in Havana. "We know all about the invitation, and we're looking at when we can do it," McCartney's spokesman told the newspaper. "We're getting all kinds of requests at the moment. The Chinese have just asked him to play in Tiananmen Square."</p>